Fun fact: Ancient Egyptians used a base 12 for time (and in some other places) because we have have 12 segments on our index through pinky fingers. They used their thumbs as a placeholder or to count. That base 12 system then turned into the 24 hour clock system we use today.
this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2023
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There's also evidence of an early base-12 system in use for some Indo-Europeans -- it's likely why the English morphology doesn't become compositional until 13:
Ten (not compositional)
Eleven (not compositional)
Twelve (not compositional)
Thirteen (related to three-ten)
Fourteen (relates to four-ten)
Etc.
Well shit, TIL. I always wondered why it was 12/24 hours.
12/24 is also easily divisible by more numbers: 1, 2, 3, 4, & 6
10/20 only have the factors 1 & 5
60 is divisible by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30
100 is divisible by 1, 2, 4, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 50
I have no idea what's up with using am/pm when we could just use 24 hours. It makes no sense to me that someone would even think to create that. Like, "Hmmm. Okay. What if instead of 1500, we say that's 3 but in the afternoon? That way there are two 3s, and people could get more confused. Jk! It's so that the middle of the day and middle of the night are both at 12. I mean, I guess everyone would already know that 0000 and 1200 are the middle of their respective halves of the day, but let's just make both 12. There's no way this could cause any difficulties. Even if 12:45 am is before 1:15 am of the same day."
In base 12 (using T for ten and E for eleven), we can have the following:
10:00am => 0T:00
11:00am => 0E:00
10:00pm => 1T:00
11:00pm => 1E:00
Boom! The second digit of the hour (in 24 hour notation) does exactly what AM and PM does!
In most of European countries we don’t have an equivalent of AM/PM and we mostly use 24 hours time. If not we have to add “6 of the afternoon”.
Fun fact: can you tell a difference between “midnight in the morning” and “midnight in the evening”? It seems that everyone assumes that midnight is always the end of a day, but 24h clocks never display 24:00. It’s 00:00 to 23:59
I guess I found another shower thought.
Probably something with sundials. ~6am going up to 12 at noon, then going 1-6pm if night and day are equal (I've never actually seen a sundial and I'm sure people got clever with them as time went on)
I mean a sundial doesn't even track hours so much as daylight before and after noon
Based?
Not this again….. Count Babylonian style. Thumb trace each section of the fingers in your left hand. Count the multiple with your right. 5 * 12 = 60.
Base 60.
The oldest known writing system (Mesopotamia, I think but not sure) is base 60 and by and large influences calendars, degrees, etc today so I wouldn't preclude the possibility of an alternate timeline where this could happen based on historical factors alone
“Hundred” in Germanic Europe used to be 120 before the Romans came and introduced their “century” with a value of 100. This is still known as “the long hundred”
12, 60, 120, 360 are the first superior highly composite numbers. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_highly_composite_number
These number divides neatly into integer parts in many ways for their size.
They are also the basis of many pre decimal counting systems, some of which are still around. 360 degrees in a circle. 12 hours in a day.
The Babylonian’s used base 60. We still do for time as you pointed out. The minute refers to a minute(as in small) part of something. The “second” is the “second minute”. Ie a minute divided into minutes. This system is also used for geodetic cordinates. Where we have arc minutes and seconds.
This is a plot point in an old manga series. I forget which one. Needless maybe?
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